I don’t often do this, but I must proffer several unfortunate object lessons for many of us, if not most or even all of us.  The example comes from Nevada.

The parents of a seventh grade student who killed a teacher and wounded two students before taking his own life could face charges if police determine the boy got the semi-automatic gun from home, police said today.

“The potential is there [for charges to be filed],” said Sparks Police Department Deputy Chief Tom Miller. He said that decision would have to be left up to the local prosecutor’s office.

Miller said investigators believe the 12-year-old obtained the Ruger 9mm semi-automatic handgun from his home, however authorities are still trying to confirm the origin of the firearm.

He declined to identify the boy out of respect for his grieving family, but said he was a seventh grade student at Sparks Middle School.

One day after the shooting that took the life of a Marine veteran turned math teacher and left two students wounded, police said they were trying to determine what caused the student to snap.

Miller declined to address reports that the shooter may have been bullied, but Faith Ebans, a student who said she had math class with the gunman, told ABC News she believed he had been made fun of at school.

“I saw kids pushing him around and doing a lot of mean things to him,” she said.

“I guess one day he got tripped and my friends said, ‘Trip them back,” she said. “But I guess he just decided just to shoot them.”

The first object lesson has to do with education.  It may not have been fifty years ago, but public education has turned into an opportunity for the statists to indoctrinate gullible children into the ideas of communism, train them in atheism, and teach them to ignore all that is holy, good and righteous in favor of that which is manipulative, self serving and abusive.

Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly unsurprising that children snap in such environments.  As I tried to explain to a younger man in the context of “criminal intent” – a man who lacked my wisdom and years – in a very heady conversation, children are left virtually defenseless in public schools.

I know very little about you, but I assume (you can correct me if I’m wrong) that you do not have children of advanced school age (and I have no idea whether you are married). If your children one day attend public schools (I home schooled mine for the last several years except for one), they will find this notion in spades in the school system. Let me tell you how it plays out.

The kids that know they aren’t attending college know the kids who intend to attend college. The school system has given up on the idea of finding facts, finding fault and finding intent. Hence, the kids who have no intention of attending college abuse the ones who intend to attend college. It happens this way, and hundreds of others.

Let’s say that the school lunch line of a five minute wait. The bad kids will break in line and even punch the good kids. The good kids take it, run away, and avoid conflict at all costs. They do this because they know that the principal will make no attempt whatsoever to find facts or intent if a fight breaks out. Fights means that a kid is defending himself, or even that he isn’t and sits in a corner getting the hell kicked out of him. When it’s finally broken up, both kids get suspended, it goes on record, and colleges don’t accept kids with records. End of story. The competition is too high to accept kids with records, regardless of the fact that it’s disputed. All such records are disputed by every student.

My boys could have beat the hell out of anyone who they fought, but one of them needed to attend a scholarly college to do what he does, and for him we simply planned classes to avoid the bad kids, sent him with his lunch, and prayed that he got out without being in a … ahem … “fight.” Daniel, my Marine, just beat the hell out of anyone who accosted him. It cannot be that way for everyone. The ones who need to go to college behave differently. Daniel is in college now because of the Marines.

You see, smarts comes from books. Wisdom comes from age and experience. I have that. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt. And if you have children of advanced age one day, they will get the hell beaten out of them in school, or they will defend themselves and not go to college, or you will home school them. Welcome to fact-less, intent-less jurisprudence and lack of lawsuits against schools.

Public schools are tailor made for abusive treatment, and sometimes Christian schools aren’t much better with the girl-drama and cliques.  Be careful and wise, younger men, on how you educate your children and what you allow them to endure.  Consider home schooling.

The second object lesson pertains to guns.  I don’t know what “secure your weapons” means for you.  I don’t know if you’re an empty nester, or have younger children at home, or perhaps children being abused in public schools.  I know some men who never have a problem even with younger children, where their children know that even touching a gun means a “whooping.”  Others will have to use a different metric.

But if you do not exercise positive control over your weapons, you may find yourself heartbroken, and possibly in prison.  My opinion is that it isn’t within the purview of the state to tell you what “secure your weapons” means for you.  But you must police yourself.  The lives and freedom of you and your loved ones is at stake.